My breastfeeding saga

I feel the need to warn the easily queasy that this post includes talk about breasts, nipples, breast milk, and the horrible things that can go along with breastfeeding. It’s not that bad, I promise. But you have been warned.

Before Eddie was born, I had every intention to breastfeed him. I was even looking forward to it. And even if you ignore the health benefits your child gets from breastfeeding, there are other great benefits as well. First and foremost, it’s a lot cheaper than formula. A LOT cheaper. Many stores lock up their formula because it is often stolen to be sold on the black market. Formula smells horrid, breast milk smells sweetly pleasant. And coming out the other end, breast milk poop is a lot less stinky than formula poop, something I was dubious about before smelling both. Plus breasts are a lot easier to carry around than either formula or pumped breast milk. Now I knew that it doesn’t always work out for everyone, but I was 100% convinced it would work out. What can I say, I was clueless. Everything I heard at my prenatal appointments was how the hospital would support breastfeeding by having baby stay in the room in with you, letting you have skin to skin contact right after birth, and there would be lots of nurses and support staff that could help.

Then reality stepped in and reared its ugly head.

You can read about my childbirth experience and post childbirth early breastfeeding attempts in detail in my posts from the past few weeks. Some of this is repeat information.

Eddie was taken to the NICU not because he was struggling to survive and not because he was pre-term (he was actually over 41 weeks!) but because they thought there was a small possibility he had an infection and it takes 48 hours to grow the bacteria culture to find out. The NICU staff had to allow me to attempt breastfeeding whenever I wanted, but they didn’t have to care if it was going well or not, and let me tell you, they really didn’t care.

It was a total turnaround when Eddie got out of the NICU. I was there one more night after that and the maternity ward looked at formula as a drug (I’m not kidding) that had to be signed out and was strongly discouraged. Any pacifier I had was strictly forbidden, never mind the NICU gave me a supply of both pacifiers and formula when they brought him to me. Eddie had been getting formula for two straight days (regardless of how often I came and breastfed him), as well as a constantly present pacifier. It was no wonder he couldn’t get the hang of latching on to my breast. When I got home, it wasn’t getting any better and my frustration only grew. It was so painful to feed Eddie because he was trying to suck only the nipple as he had practiced his entire short life. After a few days my nipples were bloody and sore, so I decided to pump for a day or two to see if they would heal. It still didn’t help. No amount of lanolin helped either. When I started pumping red milk (yuck!) I made the hard decision that I would pump and bottle feed him. By this time, I was making plenty of milk, I just couldn’t convince the little guy to take it from me directly. I cannot express how much dedication this took. It meant for the first months of his life I would spend about half my day pumping, feeding, and cleaning the pump and bottles. It took about 30 minutes to pump, 15 minutes on each breast. Looking back it may have been smarter to get a double pump, but we bought the pump when I was stubbornly sticking to the idea I would eventually breastfeed directly. The handling of pumped breast milk can also be a bit of a pain. You have to refrigerate any extra and keep track of how old it is and freeze any that you aren’t going to use. There has to be a system of how you get it back to room temperature whether it is refrigerated or frozen. If you are going out for any length of time you have to pack some as well as a pump (it’s amazing how quickly it can get painful), plus a way to get it up to room temp or know how long that will take and plan accordingly. I never really felt comfortable pumping in public. It’s a lot easier to get a baby on your breast and cover him than a pump you have to hold in place. I got really good at pumping in my car. When at home, I would strap Eddie in his rocking chair so he could watch what Mama was doing. That chair was the greatest gift I got. It gave me a place to set Eddie down where he could see me and I could entertain him by making faces at him. And he would entertain me by making faces back.

There is surprisingly little to no information or support for

moms that want to give their babies breast milk but have no luck feeding on the breast. When people asked if I was breastfeeding, what exactly is the answer? Well, I was feeding him nothing but breast milk, but I wasn’t feeding him from the breast. I have yet to encounter any useful vocabulary for this. It seems pumping is only for moms who breastfeed and have to be away from the baby at certain times. I always wonder how many moms have done what I did, exclusively pumping to bottle feed breast milk. It’s a lonely place to be, that’s for sure. For an interesting comparison, google images for “breastfeeding cartoons” vs. “breast pumping cartoons”. It’s a world of difference.

I learned early on about having to get the milk back to about body temperature, or at least room temperature. When Eddie was about a month old, I took him out to work a checkpoint at a car rally. I had to drive about one hour to get there, was there about 45 minutes, and then drove to the finish location and was there around a hour. All told I needed to feed Eddie two ounces of milk at least twice. I brought some frozen bottles with me. As I was driving there, it suddenly dawned on me that it was too cold to give him. Or too cold to even pour in the bottle. I panicked a little because I had never thought about this before. In fact, this was the first time I had brought pumped milk with me. It was one of the first times I had even left the house since bringing him home. So I proceeded to put the bottle of freezing cold milk in between my legs and under my arms to get it to warm up. Wow it was cold. Brr. It worked out, thank goodness Eddie has always been the most flexible kid and quite forgiving of his clueless mom. I learned the hard way that carrying pumped breast milk means always planning ahead.

One important lesson I would like to impart to anyone reading this: DO NOT CHANGE BIRTH CONTROL WHILE BREASTFEEDING OR PUMPING. I was taking the no estrogen pills and at my follow up appointment after giving birth mentioned that I had taken the other before and it was harder to remember to take these at the exact same time every day. It was kind of an offhand comment. It wasn’t like it was a hardship or anything. But, the doctor said that I could switch to the regular kind because my milk production was well established. I switched when my prescription ran out when Eddie was about 7 months old. Before this, I was making so much milk I was running out of room in the freezer to store it. About one month later my milk production took a nose dive and I wasn’t even pumping enough to feed him everyday. It continued going down and eventually I had used all the milk in the freezer and had to start supplementing with formula. By the time he was 10 months old he was only getting formula, it wasn’t even worth the time to get the pump out. This was even more painful than not being able to feed him directly from my breast. It was even more painful than the cracked, bloody nipples. I felt like a total failure.

I know I shouldn’t have felt that way. I gave him breast milk exclusively for a good amount of time and it has clearly had a good effect. He almost never gets sick and when he does, it’s barely noticeable. I don’t regret any of the time I spent in order to feed him breast milk. It was time well spent. And he is clearly a happy, healthy kid and that’s what is really important. I just pray that it will be easier with the next one.